In the late 1960s, after the psychedelic pop band the Zombies broke up, there were two impostor bands touring America pretending to be the group behind “Time of the Season.”īut the issue of phony artists has become even more complicated and disorienting in the digital era, from mislabeled files on piracy sites to straight-up streaming service deceit, in which uploaders try to earn royalties by posting unauthorized recordings by famous artists. The music industry has almost always had a fakeness problem.

In the video’s comments, one user wrote, “Spotify recommended this to me saying Electric Light Orchestra dropped this lol.” Another: “ur under the wrong name on spotify, this song goes so hard get the credit u deserve🔥.” I’m not the only one who’s made this journey. The video for “Dead Wrong” can be found on YouTube, on the channel of user Eloskee (the same handle El’o uses on his other social media accounts). Who is El’o? Details about him are fairly scant online, but I did find-under stylizations of his name ranging from El’o to El’O to Elo - O-a smattering of music related to a “Rap Artist x SongWriter” from St. Judging by the multiple post replies that mention a “garbage rap track” featuring autotune, it appears our friend El’o has appeared on the real Electric Light Orchestra’s page more than once.

In a post from June on the Electric Light Orchestra fan subreddit, a user who “noticed a lot of posts regarding Spotify’s constant errors on ELO’s artist page” laid out a tutorial for aggrieved fans to report errant tracks to Spotify.

The November occurrence doesn’t seem to be the first one.

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